The first thing that you need to do is decide how much space you need to plant your garden. Depending on this space, figure out how many plants to plant.

Vegetable gardens need plenty of sunlight. Generally speaking, the more sun the better. Don’t plant your garden too close to trees or anything else that will shade it too much.

Vegetables need good drainage when they grow, so it’s a good idea to plant them in raised beds. You can make these out of cement blocks or wood. If you don’t have these resources, you can plant on raised mounds of dirt.

Growing Tomatoes

There are so many varieties of tomatoes to choose from. It’s a good idea to plant tomatoes when the soil is warm, after danger of frost is over.

If you’re planting dwarf plants, place them 12 inches apart in the row. If you’re planting staked plants, place them 15 to 24 inches apart.

tomatoes need plenty of water, especially during dry summers. Water them thoroughly every couple of days. Tomatoes in containers may need daily or even more frequent watering.

You’ll know when your tomatoes are ready when they’re firm and fully colored. In hot summer weather, pick your tomatoes every day or two. Even after they’re picked, they’ll continue to ripen slowly over the next several weeks.

Growing Sweet Corn

Like tomatoes, there are lots of different varieties or corn. Sweet corn needs warm soil. You should plant corn just before the frost-free date.

Place the seeds 1/2 inch deep in cool, moist soil. Space the kernels 9 to 12 inches apart in the row. It’s a good idea to plant two or more rows side by side to ensure good development. Allow 30 to 36 inches between rows.

Fertilize around the tomato seeds right when you plant them. When your corn reaches almost 10 inches, fertilize again. Corn will be ready to harvest 3 weeks after the first silk appears.

Your corn will be ready to harvest in 60-85 days. To pick them, break the ear from the stalk close to the base so as not to damage the ear or the stalk.

Growing Radishes

Radishes need a fine, well-prepared seed bed. It’s a good idea to apply animal manure or compost about 6 weeks before planting. This helps build up the water-holding capacity of the soil, and it balances the nutrient supply.

Plant small radishes 1-2 inches apart, and larger varieties 6 inches apart. You can grow several rows of radishes in a bed as long as you keep your beds at least 2 feet apart.

Radishes need consistent moisture. If they dry out during their growth, they’ll become bitter. Keep your radishes plenty moist throughout the growing season. You can use straw mulch to help retain moisture in your soil.

Most radish varieties mature in 25 to 35 days. They’re only mature for a short time, so if left in the ground too long, they can become pithy and mealy. It’s a good idea to watch them closely, and pick a radish every so often to determine their maturity.

Allan Wilson
http://www.articlesbase.com/gardening-articles/setting-up-your-garden-for-tomatoes-sweet-corn-and-radishes-129844.html

Shrubs are great plants to use in your landscaping project. There are many varieties out there so you should easily find one that works well with your scheme.

Using Shrubs In Your Landscape Project
Shrubs are a pain-free, easy maintenance solution to creating a neat looking border. They are not only stunning and add interesting colors, but best of all they require very little work on your part once planted. There are many different species available so you should easily be able to select one that fits in with your scheme to perfection.

The Various Kinds Of Shrubs
Whether flowering like lilac and roses or adding winter interest like dogwood, shrubs come in all shapes and sizes, giving you a lot of colors and textures to choose from. They are a great way to give some height to a low flower scheme, providing much necessary balance to the overall visual effect. A vibrant specimen will also add a strong accent to nearby features.

Successful Borders
The secret to achieving the perfect border design is to use a balanced mix of heights, textures and colors that work well together. Shrubs can be very useful for this purpose as they can add interest, style and color to your borders and home throughout the year: a small amount of trimming will ensure they keep their good looks and do not grow too big.

Shrubs can also be used to line your plot, for instance as a hedge between your neighbors’ garden and your property. They are perfect for this as they will clearly delimit the area without closing the view like trees and fences do, so both you and your neighbors can enjoy them.

Planting And Basic Maintenance
Like most plants shrubs require a healthy soil with good drainage to thrive. This means that you may need to improve your soil by mixing in compost before you plant your new shrubs. Before you proceed you should always check if the roots look healthy. If needed you can use a knife to loosen them up before placing into the hole you dug. Good, regular watering is an absolute pre-requisite when establishing new shrubs.

The shrubs may look quite spread out at first but be patient as they will soon grow to fill in the gaps: you do not need to plant many shrubs to achieve a great effect. If the gaps do bother you, you could look into adding flowers in between the shrubs: perennials work wonders for this and will contribute to creating an even more interesting look for your landscaping scheme.

Mr.Andrew Caxton
http://www.articlesbase.com/gardening-articles/shrubs-used-in-landscaping-135288.html

Cottage gardens are traditionally thought of as English gardens, lushly planted with colorful jumbles of flowers and shrubs, and grown in areas with mild winters and cool summers. Unfortunately, most places in the U.S. outside of the Pacific Northwest do not have the proper climate for an English garden.

Luckily, American cottage gardens are just as beautiful and better adapted to our climate. Still based on the lovely informal array of flowers and shrubs, they are perfectly suited to most informal suburban homes or country lots without the need for a huge English manor garden space that few of us have.

American cottage gardening encompasses using more drought tolerant and native plants, plants that are hardier for cold winter climates, and plants that tolerate and even thrive on the sunshine. The style tends to look natural and free flowing without any plan or design, however does indeed usually have a backbone plan to bring out the best in plant color combinations and textures that compliment each other. That being said, cottage gardens are also places where self seeded plants may be allowed to pop up as they will, and the garden is always a surprise from one season to the next! Flowers, shrubs, vegetables and herbs may share the same beds, and roses abound! Vines soften fences and walls, and furniture and decor is simple and comfortable.

Some easy to grow, drought and heat resistant plants perfect for the American cottage garden include yarrow, valerian, Russian sage, coneflower, coreopsis, scabiosa, joe pye weed, daffodils, sunflower, butterfly bush and roses. Many herbs also love heat. Sage, thyme, purple basil, golden oregano and lavender all thrive in my high desert garden. Annuals can be seeded directly in the garden and many self sow for next year as well. Good cottage gardens choices include cosmos, annual sunflower, cleome, alyssum and poppies.

Cottage gardens are magical places, full of charm, whimsy and surprises, and a perfect place to let your creativity in the garden shine and grow. Don’t forget to add a meandering path, a rustic or painted arbor, and a picket fence here or there.

My own garden here at The Garden Glove is a cottage garden style, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. See photos and read articles on cottage style gardens at TheGardenGlove.com/cottage_garden.html.

If you’re looking for a laid back style, beautiful easy care flowers, and a charming feel for your home and garden, cottage style is for you.

Kathy Wilson
http://www.articlesbase.com/gardening-articles/how-to-grow-a-cottage-garden-135996.html

flowers are messengers of our unsaid feelings. They have been symbolically used in many contexts. Writers, poets and philosophers have used flowers to express their emotions. Each flower is distinct from another and has an individual identity. Each flower has its own meaning and is used differently in different cultures and traditions. Each kind of flower has different color and even the color speaks for itself. Some colors are bright and refreshing some are dull and pale and each color stands for its appeal and meaning.

Some flowers grow uniquely in a particular area and it is that flower which bears significance for that region. As wild flowers are mostly found in the North American region and are well known for their medicinal value. There are wild flowers like Orchid, which have a different meaning and are extensively used for decorating purpose. Flowers are simple and silent but convey a lot of things. Each flower has a peculiar quality, Lily, is grown only in summers and is considered as the most beautiful flower to be seen in summers. It denotes a special feeling and the sober color adds to its warmth.

Gifting flowers is a way of expressing your emotion to a person. Flowers have been used as a gifting option since ages. It is the most formal and also the most informal way of communicating your feelings. You could gift a flower to show gratitude, regret, love, sympathy and even as a token of appreciation. Flowers jell with any occasion. Finding the right combination of flowers to gift could be a tricky task. Hence you make it simple by choosing the options available with online flower shops. The online shops have varied flower listings which can be sent across nations and you also need not compromise on the combination you want.

If you send flowers online, you can save your time. It gives you the liberty to make your desired combination. Seasonal flowers are the favorites and spring is the time when you have umpteen options available. Flowers have limited shelf life hence hoarding them before an occasion is not possible. Booking them online beforehand is a more viable option to consider. Each flower can have varied meaning. Thus it is important to tell the person what the flower you have gifted symbolizes. If you personally send across a message with the flower it has more significance as it talks about your selection. If you don’t want to send any message let the flowers do the talking and the person will understand.

Pooja Lapasia
http://www.articlesbase.com/gifts-articles/language-and-meaning-of-flowers-505026.html

The Cold Hardy Windmill Fan Palm tree originated on the island of Chusan off the east coast of China, and the Windmill palm tree is often called the Chinese or Chusan Fan Palm. Robert Fortune smuggled Windmill palm plants from China into the Kew Horticultural Gardens and into the Royal garden of Prince Albert of England in 1849 after the Opium Wars of China ended. The Windmill Palm tree was named in Latin, Trachycarpus fortunei, after Robert Fortune, and after 158 years, in the year 2007, these Windmill Fan Palm trees are still growing gracefully as a distinguished, exotic, rare tree at Kew Gardens, a palm of noble bearing.

From Kew Gardens in England, the Windmill Palm tree was spread throughout Europe, from the Mediterranean hot climates of Italy and Greece to a cold hardy testing ground in the landscape gardens of Switzerland and Bulgaria, where the Windmill Palm trees have remarkably survived, leaves even remaining green when covered with ice or snow. During the past seven years, truckloads of Windmill Fan Palm trees have been transported and planted in Canada and have survived the extreme cold winters in New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, New Jersey, and Michigan.

Although most Windmill Palm nursery growers are conservative in recommending the Windmill Palm tree planting to be restricted to growing in zones 8-10; other Windmill Palm Nursery growers recommend and guarantee this rare palm tree to grow in zones 3-10. There has been a rush by Northern nursery retailers to plant Windmill Palm trees for the home gardener, who wants that tropical look and accent around his pool or patio. The Windmill Palm tree is planted at plant nurseries from seed, where they grow about one foot each year. The slow growth of the Windmill Palm is partially responsible for its cold hardiness. Another characteristic that is inherently cold hardy is that the fibers that cover the trunk insulate the growing center of the tree. The brown-gray color of the burlap-like fibers cover the trunk like a wool covering in winter, and the dark color attracts the warmth of the sunlight. A coarse green wax covers the leaves and stems to make the Windmill Palm tree even more cold hardy.

The Windmill Palm tree is most often grown as a solitary, single trunk plant, however, some Windmill Palm nursery growers offer double or triple trees growing in the same container as large as 100 gallons. These huge 10 foot tall Windmill Palm trees are choice, tropical looking specimens for malls and at entrances to governmental buildings. The Windmill Palm tree can be easily shipped by UPS on short orders, and large Windmill Palm trees can be shipped by semi-truck, motor freight lines. Shipping Windmill Palm trees can be easily done any season, and the survival rate is excellent for large specimens. Very large specimens of Windmill Palm trees have been recently installed at the entrance of the new Cloister Resort Hotel-a 5-star hotel-located at Sea Island, Georgia, where the Windmill Palm tree is not only tropical in appearance and cold hardy, but completely resistant to the Atlantic Ocean salt water air problems. The Cloister hotel has grown smaller Windmill Palm trees at various out buildings for past years successfully. The expense of installing large Windmill Palm trees can be offset by planting small specimens that can be expected to grow about one foot each year. Because of the recent success of planting large specimen trees of the tropical looking Windmill Palm tree in Canada and Northern U.S. States, many gardeners are now experimenting with planting small Windmill Palm trees in the North, before the plant has developed a sufficient dense fiber covering to make the tree cold hardy enough to survive the deep freezes in the Northern States.

Typically the Windmill Palm tree has a history of surviving over 150 years of age in the Western World at a height of 40 feet, but accurate reports of Windmill Palm trees, native to the Island of Chusan in Eastern China, do not exist in translated texts, but conceivably could reach 100 feet in height. The rapid growth of Western influence on the development of China will undoubtedly reveal many more interesting botanical, developmental facts concerning the Windmill Palm tree in the near future.

The Windmill Palm tree appears to have all the perfection of tropical landscape gardening requirements for growing throughout the United States and cold hardy areas of Canada and Europe. Most types of soils are acceptable for growing Windmill Palms. Very few insect and disease problems exist to endanger growing Windmill Fan Palm trees. Even through slow growing, the Windmill Palm captivates the tropically minded gardener for pool and courtyard plantings. The Windmill Palm tree grows as separate male and female plants, and the date that is produced is inedible, resulting from the yellow, pleasantly, perfumed flowers that grow into blue seed, round and one-half inch in diameter.

Pat Malcolm
http://www.articlesbase.com/gardening-articles/windmill-palm-trees-tropical-accent-plants-cold-hardy-for-northern-united-states-and-canadian-gardens-138966.html